You Must Be 18 To Read This Blog

After M.I.A.'s "obscene gesture" on Sunday it's tempting to brag about country music radio being a safe haven for tender little ears, but .. not so fast.

Yahoo Answers: Country songs with cuss words in them?

• Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue Toby Keith......"we'll put a boot in your a## its the American way"
• Garth Brooks Third verse to "Friends in low places"
• Montgomery Gentry: "Does durn count?"
• Oh and, Hell yeah (also by Montgomery Gentry)
• Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Miranda Lambert (*****, damn, hell)
• How 'Bout You Eric Church (***)
• Down in Mississippi (Up to No Good) Sugarland (***)
• Drunker than Me Trent Tomlinson (damn)
• Here's A Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares) Travis Tritt (damn)
• Johnny Cash Jason Aldean (screw you, ***)
• Didn't You Know How Much I Loved You Kellie Pickler (damn)Between the River and Me- Tim McGraw (son of a b****)
• No Damn Good- Gary Allan
• Hell on the Heart- Eric Church
• Ain't Killed Me Yet- Eric Church (hell, damn)
• Lotta Boot Left to Fill- Eric Church (hell, damn)
• I Could Kick Your ***- Justin Moore
• Whiskey Bent & Hell Bound--Hank Williams jr.
• TOES by Zac Brown Band (*** in the sand)
• THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA by Charlie Daniels Band (son of a *****)
• MY GIVE A (DAMN'S) BUSTED by Jo Dee Messina
• Country Boy Can Survive--Hank Williams jr.
• KickMy A** (Big & Rich)
• Kiss My Country *** by Rhett Atkins

I bet you can add a whole lot more.

Town Hall blogger Brent Bozell: Luke Bryan boasted he was listening to hip-hop music when he came up with his 2011 anthem to exotic female dancing, "Country Girl (Shake It for Me)." Bryan recently performed the song on the TV broadcast of the Country Music Awards, complete with a bevy of booty-shaking, leather-clad dancers. The song is overtly sexual, although it didn't need anyone at ABC to hit a bleep button.

The comments on CMT blogger Craig Shelburne's 2008 post Keep Your @#$%^& Cuss Words to Yourself pretty much run the gamut of what listeners say to radio.

They don't like it, unless they love the song. Then, they don't mind it.

Welcome to the 21st Century?

Country Music Soup

Here's another sign of how powerfully-compelling and universal the core values which drive country's success are: prolific author Jack Canfield and his crew of co-authors have been making best-selling "soup" of all kinds since they first tossed a chicken metaphor into a word processor "pot" many years ago.

"The Inspirational Stories behind 101 of Your Favorite Country Songs. Songs tell a story, and now many of country music's most famous singers and songwriters are sharing more of the story! These artists reveal the inspiration, influence, and background, and when and why they wrote their most famous songs, in this fresh collection of stories. The book also includes great photos of the songwriters and lyrics of many of the songs. A great gift for anyone who loves country music!"

What a wonderful idea!

And, even better, they didn't just "think" of it. They did it.

The More Things Change...

The audience is wide and the hunger is deep for emotional directness and song-oriented craftsmanship.

The raised-on-rock generations of the sixties, seventies and eighties, now paying mortgages and raising families, no longer see their concerns reflected in computerized dance beats or heavy metal cartoons.

They hear in Jennifer Nettles and The Band Perry what they love in Bonnie Raitt; identify with the bluesy, blue-collar populism of Brad Paisley, Toby Keith, Zac Brown and Jason Aldean as the honky tonk equivalent of Lynyrd Skynyrd; appreciate in the tunefulness of Lady Antebellum what they previously prized in Linda Ronstadt and find their Elvis (or at least their Elton) in the kid-next-door sincerity and concert razzle-dazzle of Taylor Swift and Kenny Chesney.

-- my updated rewrite of critic Don McLeese’s December 24, 1992, Rolling Stone quote

But, WHO's Counting?

What are the odds that a Top 100 country song will contain a reference to tears or crying?

Continental Airlines' April 2010 magazine is: 1 in 3.23.

Living At The Intersection Of Virtue and Meaning

Radio-Info's Sean Ross plans to tell the now completely-sold-out Christian Music Broadcasters convention tomorrow in Orlando that “Family friendly” is a position Christian ACs own by default.

He claims that Christian AC stations are diverging further from the formats they tend to share with, like country, noting that over the last four years country’s lyrics and attitude have changed so that using a positioner like “safe for the whole family” is no longer a good fit and if country stations edit out the slightly-objectionable words in some songs (pulling “ass” out of Zac Brown’s hit named “Toes”), they’re apt to get listener complaints.

While Country Music Association-funded research absolutely indicates that our listeners are driven by music's ability to give meaning to their lives and virtue is an important attribute to them, there is no indication - i.e. last week's "RateTheMusic.com" top ten ranking of country listeners favorite new music shows that those who "love" Brown's current hit outnumber the ones in country's audience who dislike it, three to one (click on the graphics to enlarge them).

Country music's strength is its sonic and lyrical variety. The narrower competing genres become, the larger our opportunity for growth as we reflect real life and values in all of its negatives, positives, temptations, joys, loves and hates.

Here's hoping we never lose that historical advantage!

To "Ass" Or Not To "Ass", That Is The Question

And, Atlanta journalist Rodney Ho attempts this week to answer it (click to read his article on radio's reaction to "Toes" lyrics):

Wyatt Durrette, one of the four co-writers of the song, wrote to me in an email:

“I’m ok with the toes-toes thing. If people like the song, they are going to buy it and they end up with the real version. So while it’s not the greatest, it’s not the end of the world either.”

Scott Lindy, program director at the Bull, tested the song with the “ass” word included a few weeks back but feedback made him decide to stick with the G-rated version during the daytime when more kids are in earshot. One person said whenever the song started while he had young children in the car, he’d switch the station immediately. This is not something any program director wants to hear.

Kevin Daniels, operations manager at South 107.1, which covers northwest Georgia, said he remembers having a conversation with Zac, who told him he did not want an edited version on radio, that he’d rather it not be played at all. In fact, Daniels has not heard about a specific radio edit from the label.

“I was hesitant at first to play the song,” he said. But so far, so good. He has not gotten any bad feedback from his audience about it. In fact, he’s gotten some compliments from folks who are happy he is playing it without any changes. Right now, the station has “Toes” in medium rotation of three spins a day. “I like the song and the audience seems to also,” he noted.

Jaye Albright, a country station consultant out of Seattle for Albright and O’Malley, said she has heard more complaints from Zac Brown fans who object to the censorship.

“When radio starts to edit or tamper with a song, there’s a little bit of artistic protection from some listeners. They’d rather hear it the way the artist intended.”

Plus, some programmers in more conservative areas are more wary of the use of the phrase “roll a big fat one,” implying the smoking of an illicit substance, over the “ass” line.

I Never Thought I'd Link To A Story By Suzanne Vega

I've always loved her music and her artistry, but since this is primarily a blog about country music, country radio and my humble opinions, I have to say that sending you to her New York Times OpEd is the last thing that I would have ever predicted. However, take my word: this is very relevant and thought-provoking.

"So what is a melody for? I used to think of a melody as a kind of serving tray for the lyrics and the story within the song.... Melody is its own idea, like sculpture. You don’t look at a piece of sculpture to see what is resting on top of it. A great melody has its own design, a beautiful combination of intervals and rhythms usually expressing the emotion of the song. Somehow a melody is connected, like the sense of smell, to memory, so when you hear a song it connects you in a flood of emotions to the time and place of that song. I am sure there are reasons in the brain for this, but as a songwriter I don’t need to know how the brain does it, only that it does."

The Boot: Country's Countriest Lyrics

Brian Mansfield's picks:

#1: "In the summer time, we didn't have shoes to wear, but in the winter time, we'd all get a brand new pair/From a mail-order catalog, money made from selling a hog/Daddy always managed to get the money from somewhere" --'Coal Miner's Daughter,' Loretta Lynn (1970)

#2: "You can't starve us out and you can't make us run/'Cause one of them old boys raise old shotgun/And we say grace, and we say, 'Ma'am,' and if you ain't into that, we don't give a damn" --'A Country Boy Can Survive,' Hank Williams Jr. (1982)

#3: "Some people look down on me, but I don't give a rip/I'll stand barefooted in my own front yard with a baby on my hip" --'Redneck Woman,' Gretchen Wilson (2004)

#4: "Well, you can see the neighbor's butt crack nailing on his shingles/And his woman's smokin' Pall Malls watching Laura Ingalls" --'Hicktown,' Jason Aldean (2005)

#5: "Down by the river on a Friday night/A pyramid of cans in the pale moonlight/Talking 'bout cars and dreaming 'bout women/Never had a plan, just a-livin' for the minute" --'Chattahoochee,' Alan Jackson (1993)